[Review] Dream Linux – A nightmare for Linux novices

Admin’s Note: This is a guest post by Aditya. Though this post was drafted on 1st July, my work commitments and rather bad memory prevented this post being published. Due apologies.
I know that a title is a bit harsh but I am afraid it is true.
First lets get into some technical stuff.
Dream Linux is a Debian based distro(like Ubuntu) . It has both Xfce and Gnome interface. I’m reviewing the Gnome version.

The Installation

The first screen you get after booting into the CD ask you to choose the interface(Gnome or Xfce)
It also has memtest for testing memory but the CD cant be checked for defects, which is a very important feature, since the disk has to be free of defects as it is an operating system.
I choose the Gnome interface and booted. Here’s where I faced my first nightmare. The whole thing is pretty slow. Even after booting completely. I do know that a live CD is slow as it is limited by the optical drive but this was way slower than other live C.D’s.

The live desktop

After booting the system was pretty slow. The desktop had a few icons and it had a dock bar. There are two installers, one for installing on a thumb drive and one for installing on the hard disk. Here I installed it on the hard disk. The installer is a plus point. It is just a one step installer. First it will ask you to give the root password and next you have to add another user and at the last you have to select the type of partitioning and where to install grub. Now Dream Linux also comes with gparted for editing partitions but gparted couldn’t detect my hard disk properly and didn’t start at all. This could be due to the NTFS partition present in it. Next hit the apply button and the process will start. The apply button is greyed out until you setup everything correctly. Now when I was installing, even though I setup every thing the apply button was still greyed out. It took me while to figure it out but you have to give a password for every user. Until the the apply button will remain greyed out and the installer doesn’t even mention this.

The One( step installer)

The second nightmare started after hitting the apply button. Just to start installing it took about 2-3 minutes and it took a good 40 minutes to complete installing. Now this is unacceptable as this is a 690 MB distro. Ubuntu, in comparison, installs in just 15 minutes.

Installing(this takes forever)

Ah! So it finally installed
After waiting long enough for it to install, I rebooted to check out my new installation. The grub installed by the Dream Linux is a modified version of grub. The background is a DreamLinux wallpaper. The screen gives you two options To start Dream Linux in either Normal mode or Recovery mode. I started it in normal mode and it too a long time to boot but not longer than most Distro’s so this is acceptable. By default the O.S is set to automatically login the default user “dreamer”. The desktop is similar to the live C.D’s desktop but it is without the installer. The doc bar has everything you need. Dream Linux comes with a control panel and also with the gnome control panel. Dream Linux comes with Compiz Fusion and Emerald. The problem starts with enabling compiz .By enabling Compiz the Doc bar was lost. Now I know some might think that its not such a big deal if the doc bar is lost, but in Dream Linux world it is. The developers have fit everything from file browser to synaptic into the Doc bar and have removed synaptic from the menu. Dream Linux also comes with emerald with the default themes.

The desktop after installation

Now, generally the first thing I do is setup the internet . In Linux having an active internet connection is very useful. So I fire up the terminal and type the command to invoke the pppoe wizard and to my pleasant surprise the wizard had a GUI mode rather than the command line mode. I ran the wizard but to my dismay the net didn’t work. Then what I realized was that the DNS wasn’t set. So I try to find where I could set the DNS but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I remembered another way to launch the network configuring utility. First you need to right click the panel and select add to panel then select the network monitoring applet. By double clicking it a window opens which has a button to launch the network configuring utility.
After setting every thing up, I launched the Browser Iceweasel (a debranded version of Firefox). The net worked and the default home page was the Dream Linux homepage. It also had a link to the the Debian home page.Iceweasel(A debranded version of firefox)

Installing the ATI Linux drivers

Normally there is no need to mention the installation but I found a new way to install them I’m mentioning the installation process.
Now first I tried the fglrx drivers from synaptic but they were of no use. Next I downloaded the Drivers from AMD’s site. Now for the installer to work it needs to be done a root user or through sudo. So to install it the new way just right click the downloaded file and select open with, now click use custom command and type sudo and hit enter. Now wait for the setup to load(this takes some time) after the whole process is over hit ctrl+alt+backspace to restart xserver. After you log back in check under application’s menu Catalyst Control Center(CCC) should be present. Start CCC to check if the drivers installed correctly.Catalyst Control Center in Linux

The Bundled Software

Lets take a look at all the software that Dream Linux comes installed with.
Lets start with the browser, the default browser is Iceweasel which is a debranded version of Firefox. Dream Linux also comes with Konqueror the popular files/internet browser in Linux.
After games multimedia is the most commonly used application of Linux and Dream Linux is oriented towards multimedia. First of the striking features is that it almost no codecs need to be installed. Even the MP3 codecs need not be installed. For managing and playing sound files there’s Rhythymbox and for editing there’s mixerRhythm Box
For video files there’s Gxine and Mplayer and there’s avidemux for editing video’s .GxineMplayer
Next we have have gthumb which is a picture browser and of course the gimp and inkscape for editing picturesGthumbInkscape
Here is a picture of the Dream Linux control PanelThe Control Panel
Finally it comes with the open office suite.

Final Verdict

Although its pretty loaded up, its also very sluggish and requires some good amount of Linux knowledge. The only reason I was able to get around it was because it was similar to Ubuntu.
I would rate it 6/10 .

Dream Linux is good but the only reason I found my way around it is because I know my way around Ubuntu. With Ubuntu you follow shorter steps to achieve the same thing.
You could try Xubuntu for that system of yours:)

i believe the sluggish part is hardware specific problem. in my experiment dreamlinux ran smoothly even at exotic old pentium 4. many windows user might lost when using dreamlinux and perhaps many mac user also. but in my conclusion dreamlinux is one of the best lightweight distro ;-)
and its closer to debian than ubuntu

Rather than looking at whats closer to Debian look at what’s more user friendly. While using Dream Linux I found everything to load very slowly and mine is an AMD x2 4000+.
As far as light weight distro’s go Xubuntu and Puppy are my choices.

The reason it is so slow is the kernel drivers apparently have a problem with DMA for all releases of DL. Supposedly version 3.4 will fix this, but if you check hdparm you’ll notice that you’re running PIO mode!

I’m a boring Debian-Testing user, have been for about 7 years now. A friend told me that Dream Linux was a pice of eye candy right out of the box. (I hate pretty and slow distros) Eventualy he convinced me to try it. Even Ubuntu wasn’t so easy to install. My total install time (partitioning included) was under 20 minutes. My old laptop seemed to have gotten a new life blown into it. I did use XFCE though; long, long, long time since i have enjoyed GNOME.

I would highly recomend DL to any newbie or experienced user. The bundled software has everything you need to start trying it out, as well as tons of codecs Ubuntu lacks, thus reducing frustration time for new users.

A user above mentioned that you might have had hardware-specific problems. I would agree, I installed it on 3 computers, and I had no driver problems, partition issues, or run issues, all three computers showed a boost of performance over Ubuntu, and much shorter boot times.
I will always run Debian (ol’ dogs and new tricks), but Dream Linux is a great second choice ´particularly if you don’t need Debians’ robustnes, and enjoy Fast Eye Candy.

Losing the default dock (Engage) indicates, in my experience, that either the video card drivers are not install/compatible w/ Compiz & Emerald, or the 3D-aspect of the card is defective. If working correctly, you should be looking @ an OSX Leopard like dock(called AWN).

Did you ask any questions on the forum? The support there is amazing. Very friendly & responsive.

Yet another review of a Linux distro by somebody who didn’t read up first. I have installed Dreamlinux on over 50 towers and laptops. Install time took between 7 to 10 minutes. If your dock (Engage) disappeared it’s because you didn’t install your graphic drivers, otherwise AWN would load with Compiz.
Two scripts: ati-install and nvidia-install would have done it if you had bothered to either search or ask on the forum.
Xubuntu? You’re kidding, right?
Benchmark Xubuntu and Dreamlinux and post the data.
Also, Dreamlinux has all wireless network card drivers preinstalled, neither Ubuntu nor Debian have that.
I will come back to see if you research your next distros before posting such FUD.